What would you say is the most shocking aspect of the Mike Amesbury affair? Mr Aymesbury is the Labour MP who has been suspended from the party after being caught on CCTV camera on Friday night punching a man to the ground and then hitting him at least five more times as he lay there, as bystanders ran to call him off. That he had spent the evening in talks with the local police team, residents and the Cheshire Labour Police and Crime Commissioner about “local policing concerns and priorities”? No, that just lends a rich element of irony, not to say, comedy, to the whole thing. That he was formerly an adviser to the feisty and pugnacious Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner and a former member of Labour’s policy making unit, the National Policy Forum? Not even that. The matter is now in the hands of the police and we are yet to see what consequences may follow.
Nope. The really despicable element of his behaviour as recorded on CCTV is not just that he punched a man who did not appear to have hit him; it is that he hit him repeatedly when he was down. You don’t do that. No decent man does. If you are stupid enough to get into a fight you should wait until your opponent is upright before you hit him. That used to be one of the accepted rules for non-thugs, one of the many with which this senior member of the Labour Party seems unfamiliar.
